Deuce 7

Street artist Deuce 7who declines to give his real namecame to New York for the first time in January, arriving with a backpack of spray cans hed stolen from a Minnesota Home Depot. After three-and-a-half weeks work, the lanky 21-year-old went home a star, his work displayed in a SoHo gallery and selling for over $2,000. In Pneumonia, Isolation, and Disorder (through Aug. 2), his first show on the West Coast, you can see why. Deuces paintings sometimes look like Hindu gods, giant insects, or charmed snakes, often with Asian or Native American influences. Some people say they see mosquitoes, or cats, he told me recently, with his jeans, Converse sneakers, and backpack all flecked with paint. My stuff needs to be all over New York, everyplace. Like on this street. Over there, underneath that scaffolding and shit. In the three or four years hes been painting the streets, Deuce has never been caught: Ive been arrested for other stuff, when I was younger, but not painting. To travel between shows and new cities to paint, he explains, Ill be hopping trains around Minnesota as soon as I go back. I go overnight with a bag of paint and come home the next day. Paint a bunch of trains and come back. BLVD Gallery, 2316 Second Ave., 448-8767, http://blvdart.com. Free. 17 p.m. CAMILLE DODERO